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I hated the cabin. Hated the locked doors and the endless waiting.
After Nebraska, I still hated being trapped there.
I just understood it better.
I packed my borrowed clothes on a cold morning in September.
The bag remained open on the bed while I folded the blue shirt Rurik had bought and placed it inside. I had arrived with nothing except anger, fear, and the clothes he forced me to leave Boston wearing. Everything I packed belonged to the life we had built while hiding, which made leaving feel more complicated than it should have.
Rurik appeared in the doorway as I zipped the bag. His gaze moved from it to the empty dresser, but his face revealed nothing.
“You’re leaving,” he said.
“I’m going home.” I lifted the bag from the bed and set it near the door. “Dad is recovering. Mom hasn’t slept properly since you took me away, and Uncle Sal has enough men watching Boston to invade a small country. I can’t remain here forever because danger might still exist.”
“I know.”
The answer irritated me more than resistance might have. “You aren’t going to argue?”
“Would it change your decision?”
“No.”
“Then arguing would only waste the time you have already decided to use.”
He stepped away from the doorway, leaving the hall open. Weeks earlier, he would have placed himself between me and the nearest exit. Now the SUV keys remained in the kitchen drawer, and both of us knew I could take them whenever I chose.
“I’ll drive you,” he said. “We will change vehicles twice before Boston. Vladmir can arrange the second exchange, and Sal’s men can meet us outside the city.”
The ease of his surrender made me study him. “You think going back is a mistake.”
“Yes.”
“But you’ll take me anyway.”
“You asked me to return your choices.” His eyes held mine. “I meant to keep that promise even when I believe you are choosing badly.”
A month earlier, I would have heard arrogance in the answer. Now I heard fear he refused to use against me.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.
Something changed in his expression. His attention moved toward the adjoining dining room before returning to me, and I understood that my question had reached a secret already waiting for permission to enter the room.
“There is something you need to see before you decide whether Boston is safe,” he said.
My hand tightened into a fist at my side. “What kind of something?”
“It belongs to you.”
“Then why don’t I already have it?”
Rurik absorbed the accusation without defending himself. “Because I convinced myself that waiting until Cian recovered would spare you from carrying two kinds of fear at once.”
“You decided when I could handle the truth?”
“Yes.” Regret entered the single word. “I was wrong.”
The apology didn’t lessen the anger beginning to rise inside me. Every person who loved me eventually decided that protection granted them authority over what I was allowed to know. Mom had hidden Cian’s identity. Salvatore had carried secrets into his grave. Rurik had promised to return my choices while keeping another one beyond my reach.
